Drowning, After All This Time
I'm back on the H/N oneshot front. I am planning/ trying not to procrastinate and fail/writing a case fic, with a lot of chapters planned, and only a touch of romance, but it's long, and it's going to take a lot of time I don't really have to write, so don't hold your breath. Things like this, however, I can throw together a lot more quickly.
I've stolen a couple of lyrics from Christina Perri's song Arms, because ever since I first heard the song, I've been fitting it to these two.
Disclaimer: The usual, it still doesn't belong to me.
Spoilers: Anything's fair game. This is set about three years after Leo's funeral.
She's the last face he's expecting to see. There's no denying that. Last he heard she wasn't even part of this circle. But then, it's been a long time since he's put himself through the pain of listening.
He's at an international pathology teaching conference, something about the early involvement of students in practical sessions. He hadn't wanted to go, he hadn't thought he needed to go, being solely a lecturer on criminal pathology among the final year students, but his boss, all six foot of Italian American of him, had told him he had no choice. So here he is, in Vienna, for some international seminar being preached with translations in more than ten languages.
It's been three years since he's seen her, closer to four since he last spoke to her, and she hasn't changed, not really. Sure, her hair's cut shorter, and it's a slightly new shade, something closer to honey, but she's the same face, on the same body, and he can still read her like a book; the shock and then the pain are shooting across her features almost instantly. He guesses she isn't anywhere near forgiving him.
She doesn't move for a few moments, and in a twisted way, he likes that. It means he still has some sort of hold on her, he makes her stop, just for a moment.
She reaches out her hand then, the mask he used to know ever so well descending over her features.
And she shakes his hand, and that's ridiculous, because they never shook hands, she never used to be the shaking hands kind of person.
"It's been a long time." Is what he finally breaks the silence with, and he wishes he hadn't almost instantly, because the pain flits through her eyes momentarily again. He gives a nervous, awkward smile, and keeps talking.
"I didn't know you'd be here… have you gone over to the university side of the Lyell now?"
"I teach at Oxford, Harry." That's a smile on her lips now, and that puts him a little more at ease. "Other people can leave the Lyell Centre too, you know."
"I should have been in contact with you, I know, I-" he breathes.
It's scary, then, because she's saying everything in such a calm and professional tone, but her eyes seem to be on fire with rage.
"There's an awful lot you should have done…" she shakes her head, looking down at her feet. "Coming to Leo's funeral was one of them."
"I was there." He deadpans, because the topic's still tender, he remembers how painful it was like it was yesterday.
"What?" she loses her cool for a second. "No you weren't."
He sighs. "I was, Nikki. I was right at the back, my plane was delayed, and I was going to talk to you, I, I just… when I saw you giving the eulogy, I figured you were struggling with enough right then, you'd been through enough, you didn't have to deal with me as well… I wasn't in a particularly functional state myself." Her eyes are wide, like she's not quite able to translate from another language. "So I crept away, I guess I thought I'd caused enough damage…"
He can still read her well, and after all this time, he can still read the honesty in her eyes, then. "I could have used you that day, Harry, regardless…"
He shakes his head. "I'd have made things worse, you know I would."
She doesn't say anything straight away, and that's when the bell calls them in to the first session of the conference, and they need to step away from each other, so much unsaid.
"You want to grab a drink, later?" he blurts, suddenly figuring it's now or never; he hasn't really got anything to lose.
She tilts her head, as if she's considering whether it's a good idea. She nods, slowly. "Yeah, actually. Shall we meet in the lobby after dinner?"
"The lobby, after dinner." He echoes, slightly stunned at the ease of the whole thing.
I hope that you catch me 'cause I'm already falling
She looks in the mirror again, taking a deep breath, mentally scolding herself for suddenly being nervous about this evening. She's not a teenage girl, she's not been a teenage girl for a long time, but she's behaving like one right now, butterflies in her stomach, some sort of anticipation for the evening catching in her throat.
She shouldn't be like this. Harry's been gone for nearly four years, now (3 years, 11 months, 2 weeks and a day, but who's counting?), and until the moment he was right in front of her in some obscure hotel in Vienna, she'd thought it was all behind her.
Turns out she was wrong.
The decision to leave the Lyell came eighteenth months after Leo died. Everything had been going alright, she'd gotten closer to Jack and Clarissa, and she was struggling to come up with any reason to dislike Dr Chamberlain, but there hadn't been anything tying her there anymore.
And then the job offer had come up, and she hadn't been able to come up with a reason to stay. She'd been in a couple of disastrous relationships in the preceding year, and as Harry'd used to say, she'd been through the Metropolitan police force. Almost in a spur of the moment decision, she'd decided moving to Oxford was maybe what she needed.
Things are different, now. She still sees something of Jack and Clarissa, but it's not the same. Surprisingly, lecturing to a class of 157 third year medical students is a lonely job. The salary's better, and she's Professor Nikki Alexander now, but she can hardly remember the way it used to be; despite the content, she used to wake up looking forward to going to work.
She looks in the mirror one last time, and gives a little smile, because none of this shows on her face. She needs Harry to have no idea how wrong anything's going. Harry absolutely cannot find out how much him leaving changed her life, and not for the better.
He sets a large gin and tonic in front of her on the bar.
"It's on me." He smiles, something slightly wistful in his eyes. "Consider it a long overdue drink."
She doesn't have a response to that. He slides onto the stool next to her, and maybe for a second she notices his hands shaking slightly, as if he's as incomprehensibly nervous as she is, but she blinks and it's gone, and perhaps she was dreaming it after all.
"So…" he starts, "Tell me what's been going on with Dr Nikki Alexander, then."
She gives a little laugh. "It's Professor Nikki Alexander, now."
"You joined the club. When did you take the job?"
"Just over a year ago." She takes a long and sudden swig of her drink, like she needs Dutch courage to continue this conversation. "The Lyell wasn't the same anymore… and everyone else from my start there had gone anyway, one way or another…"
There's silence for a moment, because Leo's the unspoken addition to that sentence.
"You like Oxford?"
She shrugs. "It's alright. The job's very different, but you know all about that. That's why we're here."
"What about your personal life? Have you done any settling down?"
That earns a proper laugh. She shakes her head. "No. I'm as terrible with choosing the right man as I always was… What about you, have you got any better?"
All of a sudden, he's not a hundred per cent comfortable with the topic.
"I was, actually, for quite a while. It's ironic, actually, she grew up in South Africa…"
She doesn't ask why this is ironic.
"… Rachel. She was lovely, everything was going well, and then… I guess I had a minor mid-life crisis, a colleague said something to me about imagining myself in five years time… I realised I couldn't see myself with Rachel in five months time, let alone five years…"
"So you ended things then?"
"Yeah. I didn't do it very well. I think I broke her heart."
It wouldn't be the first heart you broke.
She doesn't say anything. There's a half empty silence where they both take long drinks, and then he chuckles, lightly. "Neither of us have changed, not really, we're both as useless at relationships as we ever were…"
She gives him a little chuckle in return, but inside, she isn't laughing.
She supposes he never understood, and he'll never understand; half the reason she was so bad at choosing men was because she was always looking for something to quell the inappropriate thoughts she was having about her best friend.
They start talking about work again, how they're both taking to teaching, and the moment passes.
She slams the empty glass on the table, and for a brief moment of self-criticism she realises she's not sure what number gin and tonic that was, she's been trying so hard to get into a state where nothing he's saying can hurt her.
And then the Austrian bar in Vienna starts playing Livin' On A Prayer, and she's always loved that song.
"Let's dance."
She catches his hand and leads him, half-staggering across the open space, where a few young couples have started swaying in time with the music.
He'd never been able to say no to her in London, back when he'd been in her life almost every day, and it turns out, that hasn't changed.
I tried my best to never let you in to see the truth
And I've never opened up
She sinks back into the stool, and he's swimming slightly in front of her eyes, and she's pretty sure she can hear herself giggling from somewhere distant, but his hand's still in hers, and he's still very close, and she's not in a state to register anything other than the smile that that's bringing out on her face.
"That was a nice dance." She whispers to him, in an honestly sincere tone, and he can't help smiling. She's had a fair bit more to drink than he has, and she'd never been able to hold it that well, but he's got her sitting down now, and that'll do. A step in the right direction.
"We should have danced more, Harry. When you were at home."
She's slurring her words, slightly. Maybe she's drunker than he realised.
"There was a lot of things we should have done, you know." She puts her hand on his shoulders, a sudden almost caricature expression of seriousness on her face. "It's… easy… for me to say now, but I was always building walls, at home… I was scared I might ruin everything…"
"Ruin what?" he puts one hand on her left arm, his fingers tracing light circles on her skin.
"You and me." She says, and her voice starts to catch, her eyes start to well up. "But I always loved you, really."
There's a silence, and he doesn't even want to move. There's no way what's happening, what she's saying right now can possibly be real, and he doesn't want to break the smokescreen, wake up from the dream.
And then the tears are rolling down her cheeks, and he supposes this can't be a dream, she wouldn't be crying, and she must be so drunk she won't remember this in the morning, so he starts talking.
"I was the same, Nikki. I was scared that I might ruin us too… I wanted more, too…"
"And then you went away," she whispers, suddenly through tears, "And I love you and you weren't there anymore…"
And she closes her eyes, and then she's leaning towards him, and her lips are suddenly so close he can't breathe.
But he knows this isn't right, this isn't the way things should be, she's not in control of her actions, so he catches her lips with his finger and nudges her slightly backwards.
"Don't cry. You're drunk. You don't know what you're doing."
Her eyes go wide, "But I wouldn't be telling you all this if I was sober…"
He presses a light kiss to her forehead, smiling. "If you still want to, we'll talk about this in the morning." She leans into him for a second, letting a little smile reach her tear-stained face.
"Come on, I'll take you back to the hotel."
He actually ends up carrying her from halfway back, she can hardly stand. He takes her up to her room when they get to the hotel, and slides her into bed, pressing a little kiss to her cheek.
She started dozing in the lift, so when he's certain she's asleep, he leaves, heading quietly to his own room. He's never felt so tired, but he ends up staring at the ceiling, wondering about all the things they'd both wished for, all the things he'd walked away from and how difficult the last years must have been for her, powering on on her own.
Sometime around midday the following day, there's a knock on his door. He's just been reading a couple of dissertation papers this morning, so her face in his doorway, however hung-over she looks, is welcome.
She looks up at him, and there doesn't seem to be any point in beating around the bush anymore. She's terrified, but that's never going to change.
"I remembered."
He's shocked. He honestly didn't think she would, and he'd been completely ready for it to just go back to one of those potential things that he regretted never happening.
"Come in." he ushers her through the door. There's nothing in his tone to tell her anything.
She starts the moment the door clicks closed.
"You still want to talk about it? What I said? You weren't just hoping I wouldn't remember?"
He sinks into the side of his bed, breathing heavily. She sits next to him, her eyes lit with questions.
"I'll talk about it." He sighs, "I loved you too. I didn't think, I…"
"Loved?" she whispers, so quietly it's almost unclear if she's said anything at all, but he can read where the question lies.
"Love." He breathes, "I love you." He shakes his head, "I thought I was going to be able to stop… I guess I was wrong about that, too. It only adds to the list." He trails off into silence for a moment, and then takes her hand and looks up at her with a new kind of confidence in his eyes. "Did we miss all our chances? Did our chances stop when I walked away?"
She wants to say something, but for a moment she's frozen. For a moment her brain doesn't seem to be in communication with any part of her body.
When she finally finds a voice, she gives him a little laugh, and looks down at their hands, fingers entwined.
"I kind of want to tell you they did, Harry, some twisted part of me wishes I could say I've moved on, and I'm happy, and I don't need you, but-" she stops abruptly, her eyes locking with his again.
He gives her a slightly nervous smile, "Thank God for the but. I'm a big fan of buts…"
She can't help returning his smile, amusement rising a little. "But I can't." she says with some sort of finality.
There's some sort of rich silence for a moment, unsaid things running through the air. They simply stare at each other, neither of them able to form any kind of words.
And then, and it could have been seconds later, it could have been hours later, neither of them would have known, he reaches up and cups her cheek in his other hand.
"Permission to kiss you now, Professor Alexander?"
She laughs, and it sounds like there's more truth in it than there's been in many of her laughs these last three years. "Permission granted."
His lips on hers, in that moment, are something else. Something she never thought she'd ever get another chance at, something she thought she'd let slip away.
It's gentle, which is strange, because he'd always thought when they finally got around to it, it would have been fast and hungry, but maybe there's something in waiting so long that leads to savouring every moment, pleasure in how slow it is.
He pulls away, and rests his forehead against hers, a smile on his lips.
"I'm back." He breathes, and her smile mirrors his.
"I've got you back." She whispers, before leaning towards him again.
You put your arms around me and I'm home
Nothing's sorted, yet. They've got a thousand and one problems to sort out, where they're working, where they're going, whether they're both ready to stop being quite so terrible at relationships.
They're going to argue, fight tooth and nail, of course they are, they always have done, but another thing they've always done is come back together, however shamed, however broken. They're going to figure something out, despite their history, despite everything.
After all this time, they're going to get it right.
That's a wrap! Hope you enjoyed, thanks for reading. I'd really appreciate any comments (however short, constructive criticism welcome) in a review.
Thanks
greyslostwho